Partitioning – Fixing ‘No Root File System Defined’ Error During Ubuntu Installation

filesystempartitioningrootwindows 7

I am new to linux/ ubuntu and just downloaded the v11 of ubuntu to learn linux. I faced this "No root file system is defined" error while trying to install it. This is how I was proceeding –

  1. Downloaded ubuntu v11 from the ubuntu.com website, wrote the iso into a bootable cd, and then got into the linux installation process on restarting; everything fine till here.

  2. In one of the screen during installation, there are three choices – install alongside windows, something else etc.. Since I have windows 7 in the C drive, I selected the first option – "Install alongside another OS".

Let me interrupt here to give my existing system details – HardDisk
size: 640GB. Number of existing partitions – 5 C drive – label
windows – 160GB – has windows 7 installed D drive – label linux –
160GB – does not have any data E drive – label backup – 100GB – has
some data F drive – label entertainment – 100GB – has some data G
drive – label work – 90GB – has some data All of the above are in
NTFS format.

  1. In the screen that follows, an image is shown with 2 parts and each part is shown to have size equal to 80GB. There is a horizontal slider in the middle of these two images, with which I can resize the partitions. The right side partition is labeled Linux.
    There is also an option to do 'advanced partitions'.

  2. On clicking advanced partitions on the above screen, a new screen is shown in which the partitions existing in my computer are shown – but the labels are different. I see that there are two partitions with size = 160GB each (as expected), and so I assumed that the first 160GB would be my existing C drive and the second on would be the partition which I had labeled as linux (drive D). So I selected the linux partition and clicked on proceed/ install now, and then this error was shown –
    "No root file system defined".. and I cannot proceed after this.

Please let me know two things here:

  1. During the screen in point number 3 above, the image with slider was shown. Which partition (drive c: or d: or anyother) is being referred to here? Which one am I actually resizing – is it the existing c: drive which has windows 7 installed already, that is getting shrunk and then ubuntu getting installed in the remaining space?

  2. What does ""No root file system defined" error mean? How do I select the proper partition and continue with the installation?

P.S.:

I had already partitioned my drives as mentioned above, and the D drive with 160GB was specifically left free for installing ubuntu. I would like to Select D drive during setup and install ubuntu here, while still keeping the already installed windows7 in C drive.

Thanks!

Best Answer

To answer your first question, the partition proposed to be split on the first screen was your windows partition. Since you already have created a partition for Ubuntu, you don't want to do that.

You say that you selected the partition on the advanced screen, but simply clicking on it does nothing; you need to click on the edit button and assign the partition a filesystem type ( use ext4 ) and mount point.

The error is because you did not assign any filesystem to be mounted in the root directory ( / ) and therefore, there is nowhere to install to.

Related Question